Community in Sheela Chari’s Karthik Delivers

Karthik Delivers by Sheela Chari left me with the feeling of being buoyed up by a community. Karthik is 14, a funny, sensitive, observant, awkward, self-aware 14. His community collectively sustains and supports him while he goes on his rounds, delivering groceries for his dad who has leaped off a tech treadmill to start an Indian grocery store. In the end, it is various eccentric members of this community who help Karthik forge the ability to understand, to forgive, and yet to follow his own instincts. Of course, it’s all made possible by his own generous heart but to me the story shows the power of human beings to heal one another through very simple, everyday connections. Sheela draws a very specific desi community through many small, incremental depictions of its diversity. We see it locate itself and grow roots and become part of an American city.

I asked Sheela Chari if she’d write a guest post about how she wrote her way into this complex, lovingly drawn network of people. She’s agreed, so I’m anxious to hear more about the building of community in this funny, tender middle grade novel.